He spends his days confined to a metallic wall near a couple of water fountains and an analog
clock.

And, even though he can reach people on the other side of the world, he isn’t mobile.

He is a pay phone (which we nicknamed George).

In the past 15 years — with cellphones populating the palms, pockets and purses of more and more
Americans — George has become an increasingly rare breed.

In 1999, more than 2.2 million pay phones spanned the country; today, the number hovers around
212,000, according to the Cincinnati-based National Payphone Clearinghouse, which provides such
statistics to the Federal Communications Commission.

To learn more about the endangered species,
The Dispatch identified an isolated pay phone at Port Columbus — one of 27 still active at
the airport and, according to the clearinghouse, one of 576 in operation within the 614 area
code.

Then we spent a recent workday observing the old-school conduit for conversation in the hope of
finding out:
Who uses a pay phone anymore, anyway?

Eight hours later, we had an answer.

Noon: Off to an uneventful start. George, like the baggage-claim area where he
resides, is quiet.

12:04 p.m.: A man wheeling a red suitcase heads in George’s direction. No time for
a chat, though, as duty calls: He enters a nearby restroom.

12:18: Humans drift past George, but few (if any) seem to notice him — or one
another, for that matter. Workers, passengers, people waiting to pick up relatives or friends —
everyone seems united in their downward gazes at digital devices.

12:44: A flight or two must have just landed, as the baggage-claim area suddenly
teems with people. Still, no one in the crowd has any use for George.

1: Calls made from George during the first hour of our stakeout: zero. Calls made
from cellphones within a 50-foot radius: too many to count.

1:40: A boy takes a closer look at George. He doesn’t pick up George’s receiver or
press his buttons, but he’s the first passer-by to actually acknowledge the phone.

1:45: The boy, it turns out, lives in Tanzania and has been visiting relatives in
central Ohio. What about George has caught 13-year-old Aidan Buckley’s eye? “I was just looking at
the pay phone because it said ‘Worldwide,’ ” he explains.

1:50: Several yards from George, Sarah James stands guard over a pile of luggage
and glances at her cellphone.

The New Albany resident, 36, says she probably hasn’t used a pay phone since the 1990s.

“I don’t even notice that they exist anymore,” she says (safely out of George’s earshot).

What about her children?

“Have you ever used a pay phone?” James asks her sons, 7-year-old Wyatt Butler and 8-year-old
Owen Butler.

Blank stares.

“Do you even know what a pay phone is?”

The boys shake their heads no.

“It’s that thing on the wall,” says James, pointing to George and laughing.

2:13: A man sits down in the chair closest to George. George plays it cool,
showing no emotion — not even when the man, Steven Corson, pulls a cellphone out of a pant
pocket.

Corson, 25, has worked at the airport for about a year, and he can count on one hand the number
of times he has seen someone use a pay phone.

“Everybody has cellphones,” he says (well within George’s earshot).

2:34: Almost everyone who passes George seems oblivious to his presence. He must
feel invisible.

2:54: Maybe
inadequate is a better word?

5:43: Nearly three more hours have passed, and the story remains unchanged: George
continues to go it alone.

Across the baggage-claim area, however, one of his pay-phone peers has drawn a taker.

Hilliard resident Trace Crawford, 39, has just returned from a trip to Europe and needs to call
his wife for a ride home. He doesn’t own a cellphone — making him something of an anachronism these
days, much like George (who, by the way, remains idle).